Reflection for Monday, Dec. 28

To celebrate the birth of Jesus is one thing. To celebrate the murder of thousands of infants and children is another. Yet both feasts are part of the Christmas story and the mystery of God becoming human. One day we hear the heavenly host singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests,” and three days later we hear the sobs of Ramah and the mothers of Judah lamenting the murder of their sons. Ordinarily, in our celebration of Christmas, the angels drown out the women, and we focus on the idyllic babe in the creche. We pay little attention to the dissonance of the two choirs. Why allow Herod’s savagery to cast a shadow over Christmas? One answer may be that the massacre in Judah challenges us to ponder what it means for God to have taken flesh and to have come into, of all places, this world. God becoming fully human is what Christmas is about, and it is a struggle to embrace, much less to understand, that reality.

It is likely that the Holy Family were long gone to Egypt before the slaughter began; but it is also likely that word of it must have reached them at some point. How did Mary and Joseph take that news in? And what about Jesus whenever it was he learned that thousands had died because of him? Not that he was guilty of the crime. He was as innocent as they were. But if he was like us, fully human—and this is what we are called to believe—he would feel more than relief or gratitude over his close call with death. What does a child feel, who learns that their mother died giving birth to them? Would that not forever cast a shadow over, or at the very least complicate, their birthdays and to some extent every other day? Survivor guilt is real. Countless veterans lose sleep and waking peace of mind because they know they are alive because others are dead, whether at their hand or not. The life and world into which Jesus was born is messy, implicating, confusing. We know this. We feel this. And if Jesus didn’t, then he wasn’t fully human. But he did, and was. From this, in part, he learned that we are up to our necks in judgment, from others and from ourselves. And so, he brought not judgment, but understanding, forgiveness, and compassion. He knew how it felt to long for these, and so he gave them freely to us, his sisters and brothers.

Bob Meagher and Betsy Neave